Chapter 1
“When I despair, I remember that all through history, the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and, for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
I unclipped my gun belt and dropped it onto the desk. The thud was so loud it woke the phone.
“Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Ricos speaking.” I carried the phone to the window to check the distant view of the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park. They are always there, but I like to be sure.
“Sorry Margarita,” said Brewster County Sheriff Ben Duncan. “Sudden emergency here—I’ll have to call you back.” He hung up.
My boss’s office is in Alpine, Texas, eighty miles from the small border community of Terlingua where I work with my partner, Deputy Barney George. Our office is the south county extension of the sheriff’s.
I sank into an overstuffed chair and propped my boots on the desk. From that perspective the view is different, closer. Details can be seen on Cactus Hill that the faraway view of the Chisos lacks. For instance, earlier that morning a thin, sparkling sheet of ice had encased the branches of the mesquite, desert willow, and other small trees, as well as the prickly pear, ocotillo, and other stabbing growth on my hill. The reddish-brown boulders and pebbly rockslides gleamed as if scrubbed clean. It had been a glittering fairyland when the sun began its climb over the mountains in the east. Three hours later, the ice had become big, wet droplets, unable to maintain its grip in a faceoff with the sun.
I had gotten comfortable by the time the phone rang again.
“Are you busy?” Sheriff Ben asked when I answered. “I have a special assignment for you.”
“You have a special assignment for me?”
Home planet to Margarita.
“Yes, for you. You’re not busy, are you?”
“No sir, I’m not,” I admitted, though he already knew I wasn’t.
It was the first day of December and things were quiet, so quiet Barney was at home enjoying time with his family. We were taking turns keeping the office open.
There had been an influx of visitors for the Thanksgiving holiday, but the majority of them had gone. Winter tourists were mostly families during the holiday periods, and retirees escaping the cold north. Neither group caused much trouble for Brewster County law enforcement.
“It’s a cold case,” the sheriff said.
“Cold as in…?”
“Cold as in unsolved, Deputy Ricos, thirty years cold.”
“Thirty years?” I swung my boots off the desk and sat up straight. “Did you say thirty?”
“Yes, about thirty years ago a young woman disappeared from Terlingua. I mean to say that she vanished.” He paused a moment while someone in his office spoke to him. Then he returned his attention to me. “Get up here and I’ll tell you about it.”
I grabbed my jacket, stuck the ‘Call 9-1-1 for emergencies’ sign on the door, and sprinted to my Sheriff’s Office Ford Explorer. I had to go back for the gun belt.
* * *
Our sheriff has a manner that says cut the crap but he’s a gentleman and is revered by the people he serves. He’s on the still-working side of sixty-five, but stands tall and seems younger than his age. That’s partly because he keeps himself in shape. His hair is luxurious and completely white, and he says it has been for a long time. Law enforcement work took an early toll on our sheriff.
“According to the records,” he began to explain, “on a beautiful spring day a young woman named Serena Bustamante disappeared on the Terlingua Ranch Resort, not far from the Christmas Mountains. She was only twenty-two years old at the time. No trace of her has ever been found.”
He paused to drain the coffee from his mug. “After she was reported missing by her family, the sheriff went to investigate and found her Chevy Camaro abandoned in an arroyo. On the backseat was a small overnight bag that held a couple of changes of casual clothes, toiletries, and various pieces of lingerie. Riding boots had been tossed onto the floor in the back. The car wasn’t stuck in the sand or broken down. In fact, it started without a problem and was eventually driven out of there by Serena’s brother, Joey Bustamante.”
“Did her brother know what she was doing there?” I asked.
“No, but he said Serena was involved with a married man named William Hampton who lived nearby. You’ll see him referred to as ‘Curly’ in the reports, a nickname you’ll understand when you see his photo. Her family disapproved of the affair, but Serena was headstrong and insisted they were in love and would marry. According to her, Curly was planning to leave his wife.”
I groaned at the slim-to-none likelihood of that. “So Serena’s family
suspected she was there to meet her lover?”
“Yes. The arroyo is a mile or two from Hampton’s house,” explained Sheriff Ben, “so that was the assumption they made.”
“Who was the sheriff back then?”
“It was Houston Blanton. Do you know him?”
“No sir. Do you?”
“I’ve seen him but can’t say I know him. Back when he was a sheriff in Brewster County, I was a policeman in Dallas.”
I wanted to know a lot more about that, but he continued. “Hampton was a real estate developer and investor, and still is as far as I know. He had inherited a large estate from his parents, including bank accounts worth several million dollars.”
“What luck some people have.”
The Sheriff laughed and agreed. “Even before that, he was involved in real estate deals with his father up in Montana and Wyoming. He was a wealthy man before his father died.”
“How did he end up living in Terlingua?”
“The way I understand it, the senior Hampton acquired a full section of land on Terlingua Ranch Resort in a poker game. After he died, his son came to check it out and fell in love with the area. He brought his wife to see it and she must have agreed, because after a few years, they moved there. They had a unique home built that they designed themselves.”
“I know the place. It’s an octagonal house with a hand built stone fence.”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“It’s been abandoned for a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Well yes, for thirty years. Even though he was never arrested, Curly was tried and convicted by the local folks. There was so much hassle he moved his family back to Wyoming several months after Serena vanished. The investigation stalled for lack of evidence and the sheriff had no legal means of keeping him. And Serena’s family was relentless, calling constantly and demanding to know where he had disposed of her body. In fact, her family is the reason we’re re-investigating this case now.”
“What do they hope to accomplish? I mean, I know they want us to find her, but what can we do now that wasn’t done thirty years ago?”
Sheriff Ben sighed. “They claim that the Sheriff’s Office didn’t care about Serena’s demise because she was Mexican-American, Mexican being the key word. Her brother says law enforcement believed she was a ‘Mexican tramp,’ and that she got what she had coming.”
“Do you think that’s true? That law enforcement didn’t care, I mean.”
“I can’t say for sure, but I have the old paperwork, and it seems like they did the best they could. Huge searches were organized with lots of people and that was done several times. You’ll see that the law enforcement guys at Big Bend National Park were involved, checking along the park’s border with the ranch. A lot of effort made to find either the woman or her body. The Hampton property was also investigated for a sign of disturbed earth or anything else that looked suspicious.”
“And nothing was found?”
“That’s right. The only way in which I could fault the original investigation involves a dam that was being built on an arroyo which came through the property belonging to Hampton.”
The Sheriff rose to refill his mug. He offered me coffee which I declined, having made that mistake before. I‘m pretty sure it was his coffee that got the Walking Dead moving in the first place.
He continued, oblivious to how entertaining he was. “You see, that wet concrete would’ve been an obvious way to get rid of a dead body. When Sheriff Blanton arrived at the house, the cement was still curing. Instead of busting that thing apart, he interviewed the undocumented Mexican workers. They assured him there was not a body there and he moved on.”
“That seems like a big oversight.”
“I think so, too, but about ten years later the investigation was re-opened, and an ultrasound was taken of the dam. The sheriff didn’t do that before because he didn’t have the equipment, or access to it. Anyway, they checked out every last inch of the dam and it showed nothing but cement.”
“Could there have been a mistake or an equipment malfunction?”
“Not likely, although it’s possible. Sheriff Blanton felt it was working properly.”
“Yeah, but he’s the same guy who took the word of some undocumented workers that the boss hadn’t stashed a dead woman in the new dam,” I pointed out, causing the sheriff to laugh.
“Right,” he agreed, “but I don’t think he was an idiot. He made a judgment error regarding the dam, but everything else about the investigation seems competent.”
“So what do you have in mind for me to do?”
“I want you to take this file back to your office and read through it. You need to get a feel for everything, the way things happened, who said what and
when. Then I suggest you meet with Joey Bustamante and Sylvia Bustamante Miller, Serena’s brother and sister. They live here in Alpine. See what you think about what they have to say. Then you and I will meet again and make a plan.”
I took the thick file, shook his hand, and left for home. On Highway 118 from Alpine to Terlingua I had plenty of time to think. It’s a scenic drive that cuts through mountainous, high desert grassland as you leave Alpine, and then drops down to a long, flat stretch of Chihuahuan desert. The road passes cattle ranches, stands of juniper and cottonwood, buttes, rocky outcroppings, and interesting rock formations. The jagged mountains sticking up in the southern part of the county are the most captivating vista of all, but our whole county is a case of Nature showing off.
I took no notice of the late-afternoon magic the dying sun works on our landscape. How would I find a woman who had most likely been dead for thirty years? Where to start? There are so many places to stash a body: scores of still-open mine shafts and thousands of acres of unpopulated desert. And then there are the caves, and the Rio Grande. Take your pick.
Even if a body was dumped out there in the open, among the cacti and creosote bush, it would never be found. Bones would be scattered by scavengers. If anything was left after thirty years, it would have been reduced to powdery shards by the relentless, moisture-sucking sun.
The thought of a blazing sun made me want a freezing cold beer, followed by a shot of smooth gold tequila and lime. Beer. Tequila. Lime. Repeat as needed.
I had to remind myself that I no longer drank.

Synopsis
Deputy Margarita Ricos is a smart, young Chicana with attitude, who grew up on the last piece of the United States before the land surrenders to the Rio Grande and Mexico begins. Brewster County, the biggest county in Texas, has more spectacular square miles and mountains than it does inhabitants.
The first of December is a crisp, sunshiny day in Terlingua, Texas. For the Sheriff’s Office, it’s a slow time. That is until Sheriff Duncan hands his youngest deputy a 33-year-old mystery to solve. Before Margarita was born, a 22 year-old woman vanished from an arroyo near the Christmas Mountains. No trace of her was ever found.
The next day, a tourist is reported missing. The deputies find his car and camp in an uninhabited area, and not far from the same mountains. He, also, is 22 years old.
Margarita and her partner, Deputy Barney George, set out to find two missing persons. One has been gone 30 years, the other about 30 days. Could there possibly be a connection to disappearances separated by so many years?
Their search for answers takes them to various locations in Terlingua, to the nearby resort of Lajitas, to Ojinaga, Mexico, and even as far as Wyoming.
Local characters populate the story, including two wild hawks, and a disgruntled man who believes Margarita is wrong for law enforcement; the job should have gone to a man. If you’ve met the deputy, you know that doesn’t set well.

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